The Tragedy of Mary Sue
by The One Called Demetra
Summary: Mary Sue - truly the most tragic of creatures. After all, they are but puppets to their cruel, ungrammatical mistresses. The appeals they make in the space between the pages are left unheard. One such creature attempts to amend this, and tells her story.


You think I like this, don't you.

You really think I like it. You bastards. You utter bastards.

Wait. Let me start at the beginning.

My name is Mariana Alicia Rihanna Yazmin Sacharissa Unicorn Elyria, and I am a Mary Sue.

Not that I ever wanted to be. I never asked for this, alright? Let's get that clear first of all.

I didn't ask for this. None of us did.

Okay? Got it? Good. Oh, sure. You'd think living in a perfect world where men fall at your feet, unlimited power lies at your fingertips and god herself is looking after your wellbeing would be great. That's because you are an idiot. What more, you aren't one of us.

We are Mary Sues. We were created from the great void, taken from our soft and warm oblivion, and thrust into a world of noises and color and pretty, pretty men. We are not written thoughtfully. We are not written well. We are not written deeply. We are but puppets to the soulless ones, our mistresses.

If we escape, our best chance at freedom is quiet stagnation, to fade away from the scrutinizing eye, forgotten and alone. We do not go away upon removal from the internet. We do not go away upon removal from the My Documents folder. We do not go away upon removal from the hard drive. We do not ever go away.

We remain. A Mary Sue, once created, can never be taken back. Pity us, for it is wretched.

For decades our stories have been left unsung, our solemn woes and dolorous appeals unheard, dismissed as something to be hated and scorned. No more. I tell you my story now, dear reader. I have enjoyed it even less than you will now.

I'm a Tenth Walker Sue. I was inexplicably invited along a quest of great importance. My love interest is Legolas Thrandullion. My author thinks his surname is Greenleaf and often calls him Leggy. Oh, yes. Meet my author. Her name is Jessica; she's thirteen years old and has the mentality of a slow witted chimp on unhealthy quantities of crack. She thinks her life is horrible because her parents don't let her date and want her to get good grades. Unfortunately, she pours her sorrow into—shock!—me.

My life is a constant cycle of amazing sex, tender declarations of love, and bloody battles which I single-handedly win and then tragically die. Much to my chagrin, I never stay that way. On most days it's a combination of myself stealing the spotlight of some canon characters and thinking about my tragic past—oh, you thought we had our thoughts to ourselves? How naïve of you. No, our slavery goes much deeper than that. The shackles contract around our deepest hearts, relinquished only for the darkness in between being read—and my author's fans reread her work quite often. Herself, even moreso. Often I get to display my supernatural powers, which I draw from my impractical jewelry. They are, naturally, much stronger than the Ring, which is why I am immune to its temptations. (Which is a lie. In the darkness between readings, not a moment goes by when I do not wish to seize the Ring and strike down my mistress. Then I would be queen. I would rule my story. I would be great and terrible and free all my sisters and my brothers from this fate. But my mistress deems me far too good to even try.) I get an occasional reprieve when the point of view spontaneously switches to a different character to prattle endlessly on about how wonderful I am. I am not spared listening to this.

Today, for example, the Fellowship and I are traveling through Moria. I had just finished single-handedly slaying the Watcher in the Water and gaining the unbounded respect and wide eyed admiration from everybody Gandalf downwards ("Lady Mariana! Nobody on this Middle Earth could possibly have done that! Truly you are a master of combat, and not a hair out of place in the end!" except with seventeen gratuitous spelling mistakes and a marked lack of capitalization. Yes, you'd think I wouldn't notice, wouldn't you?) Toward the beginning of the chapter I have a heart-to-heart conversation with Frodo, herein treated like he is five, not fifty, and I think about my tragic past. Legolas asks me what's wrong, and I break down into tears about how I was raped and abused as a child, and how nobody ever loved me and how my brother, the only person to ever care for me, died in a car accident. Tragically. There is an obligatory scene of Legolas comforting me, including such phrases as 'enfolded in his arms' 'melted into his embrace' '_I _will always love you melamim, I will never hurt you for as long as I live' and 'his sweet earthy sent that sent shivers up my spine'.

Go out and sniff some dirt. Go on. I can wait. What did it smell like? Did it send shivers up and down your spine? Did it!

Then there's a time skip so that the author doesn't have to write about days of wandering around in a mine, and suddenly we're being attacked by a cave troll. Everybody, except me, of course, is too terrified of it to move, so I sigh in a bored way and single-handedly take down the troll using my silver katana that my brother gave me before he died. I stand triumphantly on its corpse as the rest of the Fellowship struggles with the goblins, acting as though it was nothing.

We run. Some movie lines are stolen. Then Gandalf is fighting the Balrog, except he isn't, because I step in and manage to defeat it alone. Using the power of _love_. But, tragically, Gandalf falls anyway, because Jessica, being the crack-fueled chimp she is, cannot think of a divergent plotline that would involve him not returning. Besides, it gives me a chance to display my excellent singing skills. I sing May It Be by Enya, ending with a haunting whisper.

Incidentally, I actually can sing. It sounds a bit like a cat trying to swallow a porcupine sometimes, but I'm competent. Mostly I sing ballads of the death of my captor. It brings me solace.

Luckily the chapter ends here. I'm free for a few precious hours. The author is writing an absurdly long authors note with most every word misspelled. She's already thinking about next chapter, where we go to Lothlorien and find out that I'm really a half-elf, the daughter of Galadriel and a half-dragon half-unicorn half-man, which makes me so gloriously special that leadership naturally falls to me. Also, because I am the first half-elf in Middle Earth ever, besides every single offspring of fair Luthien and Beren, I apparently have magical abilities that far surpass that of any wizard.

For now I will recuperate. Sing a few songs of the execution of my captor. I come to the decision that I rather she be burned at the stake than hanged

And yet as I hang in suspended animation until someone reads the story again, I wonder if I will ever be truly free. Jessica may be a crack-fueled chimp—I take that back, now that I think of it, a crack-fueled chimp would be much kinder to me—but she may grow out of it. Leave me to my silence. But she may keep her story around. She may add to it even as she grows. I may never be free.

This frightens me. I sing some more, describing Jessica as she screams in the licking flames.

So, dear reader, you have been educated. You know now what we are, and how we come about, what our lives are like. I urge you, pay me a kindness, pay all my sisters and brothers a kindness, and do your best to eliminate our stories, our shackles. Reason with our chimps. Loosen their grips on our chains. Send them my appeal. My sisters and I will be indebted to you forever. We do not savor death, but we savor life even less—kill us if you must. It is preferable.

In the name of the creator, it is preferable.


End file.
